Matthew McConaughey Breaks His Silence About His Flight Plummeting Over 4,000 Feet In Terrifying Ordeal

Last month, we reported that the Hollywood star Matthew McConaughey and his wife Camila Alves McConaughey went through a truly terrifying ordeal when they were passengers on a Lufthansa Airlines flight that plummeted over 4,000 feet amidst severe turbulence. Now, McConaughey is opening up about this scary experience for the first time to describe what it was really like.

McConaughey Recalls Harrowing Ordeal

McCaughey discussed this ordeal while appearing on SiriusXM’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast with Kelly Ripa in an episode that aired on Wednesday.

“It’s suspended disbelief. I mean, it’s zero gravity,” he recounted. “Your red wine and the glass and the plates that your food was on are all suspended, floating, still just in the air. And to look at it for that long, which wasn’t that long — one, two, three, four [seconds] — and then everything just comes crashing down.”

McConaughey went on to say that the experience was “a hell of a scare,” adding that he felt “a 100 percent feeling” that he had “no way to get control of this situation in the moment.”

Backstory: Matthew McConaughey And Wife’s Plane Plummets Over 4,000 Ft. In Terrifying Ordeal

McConaughey Wasn’t Wearing Seatbelt

Making matters even worse was the fact that McConaughey didn’t have his seatbelt on when the plane fell.

“My tray table is what held me down. I did not have my seatbelt on, and there was not a seatbelt warning right before it happened,” he explained, adding that he “immediately reached over, made sure Camila had her seatbelt on.”

“[We] held hands just saying, ‘OK, is that it? Is there another one coming?’ Another one did come,” he continued. “It was odd. You hear people’s reactions. Some people were ghost silent. Some people had big bursts of laughter. And it was not like, ‘Oh, this is fun.’ It was like, ‘I’m in shock.'”

Daily Mail previously reported that McConaughey and his wife were passengers on Lufthansa Flight 469, which was flying from Austin, Texas to Frankfurt, Germany. The plane was over Tennessee when crew members reported severe turbulence, and Alves McConaughey later described the scene on the plane as being pure “chaos.” 

Alves McConaughey documented the aftermath of the incident in a video posted to her Instagram page.

McConaughey’s Pilot Friend Weighs In 

McConaughey was traveling with both his wife and a friend who happens to be a pilot.

“As a person who’s not a pilot, my mind goes to the actual engineering of the plane. The steel, it buckled. And you go, ‘How can something withstand that?'” he said. “I happened to have a friend of mine sitting next to me who was a pilot. And he was calm as could be. I was like, ‘Can the plane hold that?’ And he was like, ‘These things are so tested, that yes, don’t worry, the plane structurally can hold that.’ That was a big relief.”

“I was like, ‘If something’s wrong, can you fly this thing?'” McConaughey added “And he was like, ‘No problem.’ And I was like, ‘Great, love to hear that.'”

Related: Matthew McConaughey Shares His Simple Secret To Keeping His Marriage And Wife Camila Alves Happy

‘Hairiest Flight I’ve Ever Had’

The flight attendants, however, didn’t seem as confidant that everything would be alright.

“If you see the flight attendant not looking extremely confident, you’re like, ‘Uh-oh,'” he says. “… It was the hairiest flight I’ve ever had by far.”

The flight had to divert to Washington D.C., with a Lufthansa spokesperson confirming to Insider at the time that the flight experienced “brief severe turbulence” about 90 minutes into its route, leading to an emergency landing.

Incidents like this one serve as a reminder off why so many people are terrified of flying. While we’re glad McConaughey is alright, this definitely seems like one flight that he will never forget!